Village hut outside. The most beautiful Russian huts

IZBA
Word hut (isba) is found already in the most ancient monuments of Russian writing. Perhaps it comes from the verb melt, since in cold climates the main role in the home was played by drowned. There are also versions about the Germanic and Romance origin of the word. The term was widespread throughout the entire territory of settlement of the Russian people, with the exception of some southern regions, where a peasant house was called hut, And Siberia, where the peasants' dwelling was called house.
In Ancient Rus' ( cm.) there were two types of huts: in the northern forest ( cm.) zone is predominantly terrestrial log buildings, or chopped, the basis of which was log house- quadrangular structure made of thick logs laid crowns- horizontal rows; in the southern forest-steppe ( cm.) zone - semi-dugouts, that is, the huts are slightly (0.3–1.0 m) deepened into the ground. But already in the 13th century. semi-dugouts were almost everywhere replaced by log huts. With some minor changes, this type of peasant house is still preserved in Russia.
The main, sometimes almost the only, tool in the construction of a hut was the one used to build, or chopped, hut. Nails and other metal products were not used.
The main property of the hut is its functionality, the ability to retain heat as much as possible in the long and cold Russian conditions. winter. The choice of material for the hut and its design also depend on this. Since ancient times, they have been used as a material for huts, less often spruce (cm.), the wood of which provides warm and dry air saturated with resin in the hut. A classic Russian hut stands on basement- lower non-residential premises, in which storerooms or workshops were located. Especially high basements (up to 1.5 m) were made in northern regions, where there are harsh and snowy winters. The huts of rich people were also built on a high basement. southern regions countries. Around the walls of the hut without a basement was made ( fell over) low earthen embankment - Zavalinka, usually covered with boards and used to insulate the lower part of the house. The part of the hut standing on the basement was originally called cage(modern - room), later - upper room, since in relation to the basement it was a “mountain”, that is, upper, room. When peasant huts appeared, consisting of two living quarters, the upper room began to be called the unheated and therefore clean part of the house where they lived in summer. Since the 17th century the upper room has another name - bright room, from the word light, since, indeed, it was light, suitable for homework premises, especially after glass began to appear in the windows of peasant houses.
The roof of the house was gable so that people could not linger on it. The roofing material was boards or straw. Roof ridge - horse- decorated with carved images of animal heads, most often horses.
The hut (the residential part of the house) originally consisted of one room with an area of 16 to 25 square meters. m, which served the whole family for work, and for cooking, and for eating, and for sleeping. The walls inside the hut retained the texture of a log house. Later, five-walled huts appeared, in which, in addition to the main four walls, there was a fifth log wall separating the heated living part of the house and canopy- a cold room between the living part of the house and the porch, where the entrance to the hut was located. The canopy was used for household needs and as a kind of vestibule between the cold of the street and the warmth of the hut.
Windows in the huts did not appear immediately, then they were very small (50–70 cm high), closed with bull's bladder, mica, and at night from the outside - with plank sashes - shutters. They reached normal, from today's point of view, sizes by the 19th century, at the same time glass appeared in the windows of peasant huts. The windows faced the street and were decorated with platbands with wooden carvings. A good peasant hut had three windows.
The door of the hut was usually made on the south side so that more heat and light could enter the house. The entrance was through a threshold, which also served as protection against cold air blowing into the hut. The floor was plank.
The huts were heated oven. If the stove did not have a chimney, the hut was heated in black and was called chicken , or black. If the stove had a chimney, then the hut was called white. There were no such huts until the middle of the 19th century. there was very little.
It was most often used to illuminate the hut splinter- thin, specially strengthened and slow-burning wood chips; later oil lamps and candles appeared, and electricity did not appear until the 1920s.
The entire internal structure of the hut was regulated by tradition. In the left or right corner, not far from the entrance, there was a stove. The corner diagonally from the stove was the front part of the hut and was called red (in ancient meaning words - ‘beautiful’). In it, icons were placed on the shelf of the goddess ( cm.). There was a table under the icons, and a bench was moved towards the table. Fixed benches were made along the walls at the red corner, with shelves hanging above them. They sat, worked and slept on benches. They were also intended for sleeping pay- tall and wide boardwalk from the stove to the opposite wall. In winter we also slept on the stove.
The corner near the stove was called woman's cut(in modern Russian there is a cognate word nook- a small corner), in which women cooked food, spun, and did handicrafts. The fourth corner was intended for men's work.
Clothes were stored in chests, dishes - in low cabinets and on shelves.
The construction of a hut was accompanied by special rituals, for example, it was customary to place money and grain under the corners of the house for wealth, wool for warmth, incense- for holiness. Attention was paid to many signs when choosing a place for a hut, when laying a house, when raising a log house, when installing a roof, etc. They placed nicks- serial numbers. Therefore, if necessary, the hut could be dismantled log by log, transported to another place and reassembled. The completion of construction was celebrated with a rich treat for all those involved in the work.
In the 20th century a simple peasant hut begins to be associated with poverty and misery. Hut began to be called predominantly poor peasant dwellings, and the rich - houses. A.A. Block in the poem “Russia” (1908) he wrote bitterly: Russia, poor Russia, I want your gray huts, Your songs are windy to me, - Like the first tears of love!
In the early years Soviet power in rural ( cm.) areas were created hut-reading rooms. These were unique centers of political propaganda and cultural and educational work. They played an important role in eliminating illiteracy among the peasantry.
The Russian hut is the place of residence of the heroes of folk tales. The most famous of the fairy-tale huts is the small one hut on chicken legs where he lives.
Currently, the image of the hut, its classic interior is actively used to create historical or fairy-tale surroundings for tourist and entertainment facilities, primarily restaurants, cafes and bars.
The hut and the names of its elements are mentioned in Russian phraseological units, proverbs and sayings, as well as in the metaphorical naming of realities modern life. For example, the proverb The hut is not red in its corners, but red in its pies means that the house is famous not for wealth, but for hospitality, the hostess’s ability to bake pies ( cm.) and treat guests; wash dirty linen in public means to disclose quarrels occurring between close people. At the beginning of the 21st century. the word has become fashionable hut-reading room, now as a name for various Internet resources. Zavalinka Leisure and entertainment sites on the Internet are often called in memory of the old ruins, where they used to gather during leisure hours to talk about life.
Construction of a hut. Lithograph of the 2nd third of the 19th century:

Northern hut with a high basement:

Red corner in the hut:

Russia. Large linguistic and cultural dictionary. - M.: State Institute Russian language named after. A.S. Pushkin. AST-Press. T.N. Chernyavskaya, K.S. Miloslavskaya, E.G. Rostova, O.E. Frolova, V.I. Borisenko, Yu.A. Vyunov, V.P. Chudnov. 2007 .

Synonyms:

See what "IZBA" is in other dictionaries:

izbach- izbach, a, om... Russian word stress

IZBA- female (heater, source, istba, hut), hut, hut, hut, sheshka, shenka, shonochka, isobka, hut · belittles. hut contemptuously, hut, hut · taken away. peasant house, hut; residential wooden house; living room, room, clean (not... ... Dictionary Dahl

hut- IZBA, dial. in general meaning – A small wooden peasant house with a Russian stove (STsG 2. 143; for other meanings, see SRNG 12. 85 89). Sl.RYA XI XVII 6. 92 93: hut, only with definition. A room intended for various works(in 2nd value);… … Dictionary of the trilogy “The Sovereign's Estate”

IZBA- HUT, hut, wine. hut, plural huts 1. Wooden peasant house in the village. Five-walled hut. 2. In Muscovite Rus', an office, a public place (source). Voivode's hut. Ambassador's hut. ❖ Izba reading room (neol.) cultural and educational... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

Izba- Russian log house (mainly rural, until the 17th-18th centuries and urban), in the narrow sense a heated room (Old Russian istba, istobka, mentioned in chronicles from the 10th century). A peasant house could consist of one hut;... ... Art encyclopedia

hut- y, wine. hut and hut; pl. huts; and. 1. Wooden peasant house. New, old, etc. Put up, break down the hut. * The hut is not red in its corners, but red in its pies (Last.). Belaya and. (having a stove with a chimney leading out through the roof). Black and... Encyclopedic Dictionary

IZBA- An influential patron will help you out of trouble. The village hut, the burden of responsibility for difficult work will become lighter. A dark and cramped hut will save you from envious people and gossips. A spacious and bright hut will help you... ... Big family dream book

Izba- 1) Residential house (wooden frame) in the village. localities (in the Middle Ages of Rus' also in the city); household building on an estate; see Housing. 2) In the 16th and 17th centuries. adm. the institution and the building where it sits (I. court, congress, zemstvo, etc.). Hut in the village of Velikaya Guba,... ... Russian humanitarian encyclopedic dictionary

IZBA- official place in Dr. Rus'; original name in the 16th century. order (Local hut, Ambassadorial hut, etc.) ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

hut- decrease heater, Ukrainian izba, other Russian isba house, bathhouse (istoba, p.m. years), tslav. isba σκηνή (Io. Exarch), Bulgarian. dugout hut, hut, Serbohorv. Excavation room, cellar, slovenian. ȋzba, jìspa, jspà room, jесрiсa, other Czech. jistba... Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language by Max Vasmer

IZBA- IZBA, in the 12th - 15th centuries. name of a public place, in the 16th century. central government institution (Local I., Posolskaya I., etc.), from the mid-16th century. is replaced by the name order.

The Russian hut has always been nice, solid and original. Its architecture testifies to its fidelity to centuries-old traditions, their durability and uniqueness. Its layout, design and interior decoration were created over many years. Not many traditional Russian houses have survived to this day, but you can still find them in some regions.

Initially, huts in Russia were built from wood, with their foundations partially buried underground. This ensured greater reliability and durability of the structure. Most often there was only one room, which the owners divided into several individual parts. An obligatory part of the Russian hut was the stove corner, to separate which a curtain was used. In addition, they stood out separate zones for men and women. All corners in the house were lined up in accordance with the cardinal directions, and the most important among them was the eastern (red), where the family organized an iconostasis. It was the icons that guests were supposed to pay attention to immediately after entering the hut.

Porch of a Russian hut

The architecture of the porch has always been carefully thought out; the owners of the house devoted a lot of time to it. It combined excellent artistic taste, centuries-old traditions and the ingenuity of the architects. It was the porch that connected the hut with the street and was open to all guests or passers-by. Interestingly, the whole family, as well as neighbors, often gathered on the porch in the evenings after hard work. Here the guests and owners of the house danced, sang songs, and children ran and frolicked.

IN different areas In Russia, the shape and size of the porch were radically different. So, in the north of the country it was quite high and large, and the southern facade of the house was chosen for installation. Thanks to this asymmetrical placement and the unique architecture of the facade, the whole house looked very unique and beautiful. It was also quite common to see porches placed on pillars and decorated with openwork wooden posts. They were a real decoration of the house, making its facade even more serious and solid.

In the south of Russia, porches were installed from the front of the house, attracting the attention of passers-by and neighbors with openwork carvings. They could be either two steps or with a whole staircase. Some home owners decorated their porch with an awning, while others left it open.

Seni

In order to retain the maximum amount of heat from the stove in the house, the owners separated the living area from the street. The canopy is exactly the space that guests immediately saw when entering the hut. In addition to keeping warm, canopies were also used to store rockers and other necessary things; this is where many people made storage rooms for food.

A high threshold was also made to separate the entryway and the heated living area. It was made to prevent cold from entering the house. In addition, according to centuries-old traditions, each guest had to bow at the entrance to the hut, and it was impossible to go inside without bowing before the high threshold. Otherwise, the guest simply hit the doorframe naked.

Russian stove

The life of a Russian hut revolved around the stove. It served as a place for cooking, relaxation, heating and even bathing procedures. There were steps leading up, and there were niches in the walls for various utensils. The firebox was always with iron barriers. The structure of the Russian stove - the heart of any hut - is surprisingly functional.

The stove in traditional Russian huts was always located in the main area, to the right or left of the entrance. It was considered the main element of the house, since they cooked food on the stove, slept, and heated the entire house. It has been proven that food cooked in the oven is the healthiest, since it retains all the beneficial vitamins.

Since ancient times, many beliefs have been associated with the stove. Our ancestors believed that it was on the stove that the brownie lived. The garbage was never taken out of the hut, but burned in the oven. People believed that this way all the energy remained in the house, which helped increase the family’s wealth. It is interesting that in some regions of Russia they steamed and washed in the oven, and were also used to treat serious diseases. Doctors of that time claimed that the disease could be cured simply by lying on the stove for several hours.

Stove corner

It was also called the “woman’s corner” because all the kitchen utensils were located there. It was separated by a curtain or even a wooden partition. Men from their family almost never came here. A huge insult to the owners of the house was the arrival of a strange man behind the curtain in the corner of the stove.

Here women washed and dried things, cooked food, treated children and told fortunes. Almost every woman did needlework, and the quietest and most comfortable place for this was the stove corner. Embroidery, sewing, painting - these were the most popular types of needlework for girls and women of that time.

Benches in the hut

In the Russian hut there were movable and fixed benches, and chairs began to appear in the 19th century. Along the walls of the house, the owners installed fixed benches, which were secured using supplies or legs with carved elements. The stand could be flat or tapered towards the middle; its decoration often included carved patterns and traditional ornaments.

There were also mobile benches in each house. Such benches had four legs or were installed on solid boards. The backs were often made so that they could be thrown over the opposite edge of the bench, and carved decor was used for decoration. The bench was always made longer than the table, and was also often covered with thick fabric.

Men's corner (Konik)

It was located to the right of the entrance. There was always a wide bench here, which was fenced on both sides wooden planks. They were carved in the shape of a horse's head, which is why the male corner is often called "konik". Under the bench, men stored their tools intended for repairs and other men's work. In this corner, men repaired shoes and utensils, and also wove baskets and other products from wicker.

All the guests who came to the owners of the house for a short time sat down on the bench in the men's corner. It was here that the man slept and rested.

Women's corner (Seda)

This was an important space in a woman’s life, since it was from behind the stove curtain that the girl came out during the viewing party in elegant attire, and also waited for the groom on the wedding day. Here women gave birth to children and fed them away from prying eyes, hiding behind a curtain.

Also, it was in the women's corner of the house of the guy she liked that the girl had to hide the sweeper in order to get married soon. They believed that such a sweeper would help the daughter-in-law quickly become friends with her mother-in-law and become a good housewife in her new home.

red corner

This is the brightest and most important corner, since it was considered a sacred place in the house. According to tradition, during construction, he was allocated a place on the eastern side, where two adjacent windows form a corner, so the light falls, making the corner the brightest place in the hut. Icons and embroidered towels were sure to hang here, as well as in some huts - the faces of ancestors. Be sure to put it in the red corner large table and ate food. Freshly baked bread was always kept under icons and towels.

To this day, some traditions associated with the table are known. So, it is not advisable for young people to sit on the corner in order to start a family in the future. It's a bad omen to leave dirty dishes on the table or sitting on it.

Our ancestors stored cereals, flour and other products in hay barns. Thanks to this, the housewife could always quickly prepare food from fresh products. In addition, additional buildings were provided: a cellar for storing vegetables and fruits in winter, a barn for livestock and separate structures for hay.

Let's talk about old Russian hut, or let’s take it even a little more broadly – a Russian house. Its appearance and internal structure- the result of the influence of many factors, from natural to social and cultural. Peasant society has always been extremely stable in its traditional way of life and ideas about the structure of the world. Even being dependent on the influence of the authorities (the church, Peter’s reforms), Russian folk culture continued its development, the crown of which must be recognized as the formation of a peasant estate, in particular a courtyard house with a residential old Russian hut.

The Russian House remains for many either some kind of allegory Christian Rus', or a hut with three windows with carved platbands. For some reason, exhibits in museums of wooden architecture do not change this persistent opinion. Maybe because no one has clearly explained what it is, exactly. old Russian hut- literally?

Russian hut from the inside

A stranger explores the home first from the outside, then goes inside. One’s own is born within. Then, gradually expanding his world, he brings it to the size of ours. For him, the outside comes later, the inside comes first.

You and I, unfortunately, are strangers there.

So outside, old Russian hut tall, large, its windows are small, but located high, the walls represent a mighty log massif, not dissected by a base and cornices horizontally, or blades and columns vertically. The roof grows out of the wall like a gable; it is immediately clear that behind the “gable” there are no usual rafters. The ridge is a powerful log with a characteristic sculptural projection. The parts are few and large, there is no lining or lining. In some places, individual ends of logs of not entirely clear purpose may protrude from the walls. Friendly old Russian hut I wouldn't call her, rather, silent and secretive.

There is a porch on the side of the hut, sometimes high and pillared, sometimes low and indistinct. However, it is precisely this that is the first Shelter under which the newcomer enters. And since this is the first roof, it means that the second roof (canopy) and the third roof (the hut itself) only develop the idea of a porch - a covered paved elevation that projects the Earth and Heaven onto itself. The porch of the hut originates in the first sanctuary - a pedestal under the crown of the sacred tree and evolves all the way to the royal vestibule in the Assumption Cathedral. The porch of the house is the beginning of a new world, the zero of all its paths.

A low, wide door with a powerful slanted frame leads into the entryway from the porch. Its internal contours are slightly rounded, which serves as the main obstacle to unwanted spirits and people with unclean thoughts. The roundness of the doorway is akin to the roundness of the Sun and Moon. There is no lock, a latch that opens both from the inside and from the outside - from wind and livestock.

The canopy, called a bridge in the North, develops the idea of a porch. Often they have no ceiling, just as there was no hut before - only the roof separates them from the sky, only it overshadows them.

The canopy is of heavenly origin. The bridge is earthly. Again, as in the porch, Heaven meets Earth, and they are connected by those who cut down old Russian hut with the porch, and those who live in it - big family, now represented among the living link of the clan.

The porch is open on three sides, the entryway is closed on four, and there is little light in them from the glass windows (covered with boards).

The transition from the entryway to the hut is no less important than from the porch to the entryway. You can feel the atmosphere heating up...

The inner world of a Russian hut

We open the door, bending down, we enter. Above us low ceiling, although this is not a ceiling, but a floor - a flooring at the level of the stove bench - for sleeping. We are in a blanket shelter. And we can turn to the owner of the hut with good wishes.

Polatny kut - a porch inside a Russian hut. Any kind person can enter there without asking, without knocking on the door. The planks rest on the wall directly above the door with one edge, and on the canvas beam with the other. For this plated beam, the guest, at his will, is not allowed to go. Only the hostess can invite him to enter the next kut - the red corner, to family and ancestral shrines, and sit down at the table.

A refectory, consecrated with shrines, that’s what the red corner is.

So the guest masters the whole half of the hut; however, he will never go into the second, far half (behind the pastry beam), the hostess will not invite him there, because the second half is the main sacred part of the Russian hut - the woman's hut and the stove kuta. These two kuts are similar to the altar of the temple, and in fact this is an altar with an oven-throne and ritual objects: a bread shovel, a broom, grips, a kneading bowl. There the fruits of the earth, heaven and peasant labor are transformed into food of a spiritual and material nature. Because for a person of Tradition, food has never been about the number of calories and a set of textures and tastes.

The male part of the family is not allowed into the woman's kut; here the hostess, the big woman, is in charge of everything, gradually teaching future housewives how to perform sacred rites...

Men work most of the time in the field, in the meadow, in the forest, on the water, and in waste industries. In the house, the owner’s place is immediately at the entrance on a bench, in the ward kut, or at the end of the table farthest from the woman’s kut. It is closer to the small shrines of the red corner, further from the center of the Russian hut.

The housewife's place is in the red corner - at the end of the table from the side of the woman's kut and the oven - she is the priestess of the home temple, she communicates with the oven and the fire of the oven, she starts the kneading bowl and puts the dough in the oven, she takes it out transformed into bread. It is she who, along the semantic vertical of the stove column, descends through the golbets (special wooden extension to the stove) into the underground, which is also called a cabbage. There, in the golbets, in the basement ancestral sanctuary, the habitat of guardian spirits, they keep supplies. It's not so hot in summer, not so cold in winter. The golbets are akin to a cave - the womb of the Mother Earth, from which they come out and into which decaying remains return.

The hostess is in charge, she is in charge of everything in the house, she is in constant communication with the inner (hut) Earth (half-bridge of the hut, half-cabin), with the inner sky (beam-matitsa, ceiling), with the World Tree (stove pillar), connecting them , with the spirits of the dead (the same stove pillar and golbets) and, of course, with the current living representatives of their peasant family tree. It is her unconditional leadership in the house (both spiritual and material) that does not leave empty time for the peasant in a Russian hut, and sends him beyond the boundaries of the home temple, to the periphery of the space illuminated by the temple, to male spheres and affairs. If the housewife (the axis of the family) is smart and strong, the family wheel spins with the desired constancy.

Construction of a Russian hut

Situation old Russian hut full of clear, uncomplicated and strict meaning. There are wide and low benches along the walls, five or six windows are located low above the floor and provide rhythmic illumination rather than flooding with light. Directly above the windows there is a solid black shelf. Above are five to seven unhewn, smoked crowns of the log house; smoke rises here during the fire. black stove. To remove it, there is a smoke pipe above the door leading to the entryway, and in the entryway there is a wooden exhaust pipe that carries the already cooled smoke outside the house. Hot smoke economically warms up and antisepticizes living spaces. Thanks to him, there were no such severe pandemics in Rus' as in Western Europe.

The ceiling is made of thick and wide blocks (half-logs), and the floor of the bridge is the same. Under the ceiling there is a mighty matrix beam (sometimes two or three).

The Russian hut is divided into kutas by two raven beams (sheet and pie), laid perpendicular to the upper section of the stove column. The pastry beam extends to the front wall of the hut and separates the women's part of the hut (near the stove) from the rest of the space. It is often used to store baked bread.

There is an opinion that the stove column should not break off at the level of the crows, it should rise higher, right under the mother; in this case the cosmogony of the hut would be complete. In the depths of the northern lands, something similar was discovered, only, perhaps, even more significant, statistically reliably duplicated more than once.

In the immediate vicinity of the stove column, between the pastry beam and the mat, the researchers encountered (for some reason no one had seen before) a carved element with a fairly clear, and even symbolic meaning.

The tripartite nature of such images is interpreted by one of the modern authors as follows: the upper hemisphere is the highest spiritual space (the bowl of “heavenly waters”), the receptacle of grace; the lower one is the vault of heaven covering the Earth - our visible world; the middle link is a node, a ventel, the location of the gods who control the flow of grace into our lower world.

In addition, it is easy to imagine him as the upper (inverted) and lower Bereginya, Baba, Goddess with raised hands. In the middle link one can read the familiar horse heads - a symbol of the solar movement in a circle.

The carved element stands on the pastry beam and precisely supports the matrix.

Thus, in the upper level of the hut space, in the center old Russian hut, in the most significant, striking place, which not a single glance will pass by, the missing link is personally embodied - the connection between the World Tree (stove column) and the celestial sphere (matitsa), and the connection in the form of a complex, deeply symbolic sculptural and carved element. It should be noted that it is located immediately on two internal borders of the hut - between the habitable relatively light bottom and the black “heavenly” top, as well as between the common family half of the hut and the sacred altar forbidden for men - the women's and stove kutas.

It is thanks to this hidden and very timely found element that it is possible to build a series of complementary architectural and symbolic images of traditional peasant cultural objects and structures.

In their symbolic essence, all these objects are one and the same. However, exactly old Russian hut– the most complete, most developed, most in-depth architectural phenomenon. And now, when it seems that she is completely forgotten and safely buried, her time has come again. The Time of the Russian House is coming - literally.

Chicken hut

It should be noted that the highest example of material folk culture Researchers recognize precisely the Kurna (black, ore) Russian hut, in which the smoke from the furnace went directly into top part internal volume. High ceiling trapezoidal shape made it possible to stay in the hut during the fire. The smoke came out of the mouth of the stove directly into the room, spread along the ceiling, and then dropped to the level of the funnel shelves and was pulled out through a fiberglass window cut into the wall, connected to a wooden chimney.

There are several reasons for the long existence of ore huts, and first of all, climatic conditions - high humidity terrain. Open fire and smoke from the stove soaked and dried the walls of the log house, thus, a kind of preservation of the wood occurred, so the life of the black huts was longer. The chicken stove heated the room well and did not require much firewood. It was also convenient for housekeeping. The smoke dried clothes, shoes and fishing nets.

The transition to white stoves brought with it an irreparable loss in the structure of the entire complex of significant elements of the Russian hut: the ceiling was lowered, the windows were raised, the voronets, stove pillar, and golbets began to disappear. The single zoned volume of the hut began to be divided into functional volumes - rooms. All internal proportions were distorted beyond recognition, appearance and gradually old Russian hut ceased to exist, turning into country house with an interior similar to a city apartment. The whole “perturbation”, in fact, degradation, occurred over a hundred years, starting in the 19th century and ending by the middle of the 20th century. The last chicken huts, according to our information, were converted into white ones after the Great Patriotic War, in the 1950s.

But what should we do now? A return to truly smoking huts is possible only as a result of a global or national catastrophe. However, to return the entire figurative and symbolic structure of the hut, to saturate the Russian country house– it is possible in the conditions of technological progress and the ever-increasing well-being of “Russians”...

To do this, in fact, you just need to start waking up from sleep. A dream inspired by the elite of our people just when the people themselves were creating masterpieces of their culture.

Based on materials from the magazine “Rodobozhie No. 7”

IZBA- peasant log house, living space with a Russian stove. The word "izba" was used only in relation to a house made of wood and located in rural areas. It had several meanings:

firstly, a hut is a peasant house in general, with all outbuildings and utility rooms;
secondly, this is only the residential part of the house;
thirdly, one of the rooms of the house, heated by a Russian oven.

The word “izba” and its dialect variants “ystba”, “istba”, “istoba”, “istobka”, “istebka” were known back in Ancient Rus' and were used to designate a room. The huts were chopped with an ax from pine, spruce, and larch. These trees with straight trunks fit well into the frame, tightly adjacent to each other, retained heat, and did not rot for a long time. The floor and ceiling were made from the same material. Window and door frames and doors were usually made of oak. Other deciduous trees used in the construction of huts quite rarely - both for practical reasons (crooked trunks, soft, quickly rotting wood) and for mythological ones.

For example, it was impossible to use aspen for a log house, because, according to legend, Judas, who betrayed Jesus Christ, hanged himself on it. Construction equipment in the vast expanses of Russia, with the exception of its southern regions, was completely the same. The house was based on a rectangular or square frame measuring 25-30 square meters. m, composed of round, bark-free, but unhewn logs laid horizontally one on top of the other. The ends of the logs were connected without the help of nails in different ways: “in the corner”, “in the paw”, “in the hook”, “in the husk”, etc.

Moss was laid between the logs for warmth. The roof of a log house was usually made with a gable, three-slope or four-slope roof, and as a roofing materials They used planks, shingles, straw, and sometimes reeds and straw. Russian huts varied in the overall height of the living space. Tall houses were characteristic of the Russian northern and northeastern provinces of European Russia and Siberia. Due to the harsh climate and high soil moisture, the wooden floor of the hut was raised to a considerable height here. The height of the basement, i.e., the non-residential space under the floor, varied from 1.5 to 3 m.

There were also two-story houses, the owners of which were rich peasants and merchants. Two-story houses and houses on high basements were also built by rich Don Cossacks, who had the opportunity to buy timber. The huts in the central part of Russia, in the Middle and Lower Volga region were significantly lower and smaller in size. The floor beams were cut into the second - fourth crown. In the relatively warm southern provinces of European Russia, underground huts were erected, that is, the floorboards were laid directly on the ground. The hut usually consisted of two or three parts: the hut itself, the hallway and the cage, connected to each other into a single whole by a common roof.

The main part of the residential building was the hut (called in the villages Southern Russia hut) - a heated living space of a rectangular or square shape. The cage was a small cold room, used mainly for household purposes. The canopy was a kind of unheated hallway, a corridor separating the living space from the street. In Russian villages of the 18th - early 20th centuries. houses that consisted of a hut, a cage and a vestibule predominated, but there were also often houses that included only a hut and a cage. In the first half - mid-19th century. In the villages, buildings began to appear that consisted of a canopy and two residential premises, one of which was a hut, and the other was an upper room, used as a non-residential, front part of the house.

The traditional farmhouse had many variations. Residents of the northern provinces of European Russia, rich in timber and fuel, built several heated rooms for themselves under one roof. There already in the 18th century. Five-walled buildings were common, and twin huts, cross-shaped huts, and huts with trusses were often erected. Rural houses in the northern and central provinces of European Russia and the Upper Volga region included many architectural details that, while having a utilitarian purpose, simultaneously served as decorative decoration for the house. Balconies, galleries, mezzanines, and porches smoothed out the harshness of the external appearance of the hut, built from thick logs that had become gray with time, turning peasant huts into beautiful architectural structures.

Such necessary details of the roof structure as the roof, valances, cornices, piers, as well as window frames and shutters were decorated with carvings and paintings, sculpturally processed, giving the hut additional beauty and originality. In the mythological ideas of the Russian people, a house, a hut, is the center of the main life values person: happiness, prosperity, peace, well-being. The hut protected a person from external dangerous world. In Russian fairy tales and epic stories, people always take refuge from evil spirits in a house, the threshold of which they are unable to cross. At the same time, the hut seemed to the Russian peasant to be a rather miserable dwelling.

A good house required not only a hut, but also several upper rooms and cages. That is why in Russian poetry, which idealized peasant life, the word “izba” is used to describe a poor house in which poor people, deprived of fate, live: peasants and peasants, widows, unfortunate orphans. The hero of the fairy tale, entering the hut, sees that a “blind old man”, a “back-door grandmother”, or even Baba Yaga - Bone Leg - is sitting in it.

IZBA WHITE- living quarters of a peasant house, heated by a Russian stove with a chimney - white. Huts with a stove, the smoke from which came out through a chimney when burning, became widespread in the Russian village quite late. In European Russia, they began to be actively built in the second half of the 19th century, especially in the 80-90s. In Siberia, the transition to white huts occurred earlier than in the European part of the country. They became widespread there at the end of the 18th century, and by the middle of the 19th century. in fact, all huts were heated by a stove with a chimney. However, the absence of white huts in the village until the first half of the 19th century. did not mean that stoves with a chimney were not known in Rus'.

During archaeological excavations in Veliky Novgorod in the layers of the 13th century. in the ruins of the stoves of rich houses there are chimneys made of baked clay. In the XV-XVII centuries. in the grand-ducal palaces, mansions of boyars, and rich townspeople there were rooms that were heated in white. Until this time, only rich peasants in suburban villages who were engaged in trade, carting, and crafts had white huts. And already at the beginning of the 20th century. only very poor people heated their huts the black way.

IZBA-TWINS- a wooden house, consisting of two independent log houses, tightly pressed against each other by their sides. The log houses were placed under one gable roof, on a high or medium basement. The living quarters were located in the front part of the house; a common vestibule was attached to them at the back, from which there were doors to the covered courtyard and to each of the rooms of the house. The log houses were, as a rule, same sizes- three windows on the facade, but they could be of different sizes: one room had three windows on the facade, the other two.

The installation of two log cabins under a single roof was explained both by the owner’s concern for the comfort of the family and by the need to have a backup room. One of the rooms was the actual hut, that is, a warm room heated by a Russian stove, intended for family living in winter. The second room, called the summer hut, was cold and was used in summer time, when the stuffiness in the hut, heated even in the hot season, forced the owners to move to a cooler place. In rich houses, the second hut sometimes served as a ceremonial room for receiving guests, that is, an upper room or a living room.

In this case, a city-type stove was installed here, which was not used for cooking, but only for heat. In addition, the upper room often became a bedroom for young married couples. And when the family grew, the summer hut, after installing a Russian stove in it, easily turned into a hut for the youngest son, who remained under his father’s roof even after marriage. It is curious that the presence of two log cabins placed side by side made the twin hut quite durable.

Two log walls, one of which was the wall of a cold room, and the other of a warm one, placed at a certain interval, had their own natural and rapid ventilation. If between cold and warm rooms was alone common wall, then it would condense moisture in itself, contributing to its rapid decay. Twin huts were usually built in places rich in forests: in the northern provinces of European Russia, in the Urals, and in Siberia. However, they were also found in some villages of Central Russia among wealthy peasants engaged in trade or industrial activities.

IZBA KURNAYA or IZBA BLACK- living quarters of a peasant log house, heated by a stove without a chimney, in a black way. In such huts, when the stove was fired, smoke from the mouth rose upward and went out into the street through a smoke hole in the ceiling. It was closed after heating with a board or plugged with rags. In addition, smoke could come out through a small fiberglass window cut into the pediment of the hut, if it did not have a ceiling, as well as through an open door. While the stove was firing, it was smoky and cold in the hut. People who were here at that time were forced to sit on the floor or go outside, as the smoke ate their eyes and climbed into their larynx and nose. The smoke rose up and hung there in a dense blue layer.

As a result, all the upper crowns of the logs were covered with black resinous soot. The shelf guards that surrounded the hut above the windows served in the smoke hut to settle soot and were not used for arranging utensils, as was the case in the white hut. To maintain heat and ensure that smoke escapes quickly from the hut, Russian peasants came up with a number of special devices. For example, many northern huts had double doors opening into the vestibule. The outer doors, which completely covered the doorway, opened wide. The internal ones, which had a fairly wide opening at the top, were tightly closed. The smoke came out through the top of these doors, and the cold air coming from below met an obstacle on its way and could not penetrate the hut.

In addition, a chimney was installed above the smoke hole in the ceiling - a long exhaust wooden pipe, the upper end of which was decorated with through carvings. To make the living space of the hut free from the smoke layer, clean from soot and soot, in some regions of the Russian North, huts were made with high vaulted ceilings. In other places in Russia, many huts even at the beginning of the 19th century. had no ceiling at all. The desire to remove smoke from the hut as quickly as possible explains the usual lack of a roof in the entryway.

He described the chicken peasant hut in rather gloomy colors at the end of the 18th century. A. N. Radishchev in his “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”: “Four walls, half covered, as well as the entire ceiling, with soot; the floor is full of cracks, at least an inch covered with mud; stove without a chimney, but best protection from the cold, and the smoke that fills the hut every morning in winter and summer; endings, in which a tense bubble, darkening at noon, let in light; two or three pots... Wooden cup and crumbs, called plates; table, cut down with an ax, which is scraped with a scraper on holidays. A trough to feed pigs or calves, when they eat, they sleep with them, swallowing air, in which a burning candle seems to be in fog or behind a curtain.”

However, it should be noted that the chicken hut also had a number of advantages, thanks to which it remained in the everyday life of the Russian people for so long. When heating with a pipeless stove, the hut was heated quite quickly as soon as the wood burned and the outer door was closed. Such a stove provided more heat and required less wood. The hut was well ventilated, there was no dampness in it, and the wood and straw on the roof were involuntarily disinfected and preserved longer. The air in the smoking hut, after it was heated, was dry and warm.

Chicken huts appeared in ancient times and existed in the Russian village until the beginning of the 20th century. They began to be actively replaced by white huts in the villages of European Russia from the middle of the 19th century, and in Siberia even earlier, from the end of the 18th century. So, for example, in the description of the Shushenskaya volost of the Minusinsk district of Siberia, made in 1848, it is stated: “There are absolutely no black houses, the so-called huts without pipes, anywhere.” In the Odoevsky district of the Tula province, back in 1880, 66% of all huts were chicken houses.

IZBA WITH PRIRUB- a wooden house, consisting of one log house and a smaller living space attached to it under a single roof and with one common wall. The prirub could be installed immediately during the construction of the main log house or attached to it several years later, when the need arose additional room. The main log house was a warm hut with a Russian stove, the log house was a summer cold hut or a room heated by a Dutch oven - a city-style stove. Huts with trusses were built mainly in the central regions of European Russia and the Volga region.

From time immemorial, the peasant hut made of logs has been considered a symbol of Russia. According to archaeologists, the first huts appeared in Rus' 2 thousand years ago BC. For many centuries, the architecture of wooden peasant houses remained virtually unchanged, combining everything that every family needed: a roof over their heads and a place to relax after a hard day's work.

In the 19th century, the most common plan for a Russian hut included a living space (hut), a canopy and a cage. The main room was the hut - a heated living space of a square or rectangular shape. The storage room was a cage, which was connected to the hut by a canopy. In turn, the canopy was utility room. They were never heated, so they could only be used as living quarters in the summer. Among the poor segments of the population, a two-chamber hut layout, consisting of a hut and a vestibule, was common.

The ceilings in wooden houses were flat, they were often lined with painted planks. The floors were made of oak brick. The walls were decorated using red plank, while in rich houses the decoration was supplemented with red leather (less wealthy people usually used matting). In the 17th century, ceilings, vaults and walls began to be decorated with paintings. Benches were placed around the walls under each window, which were securely attached directly to the structure of the house itself. At approximately the level of human height, long wooden shelves called voronets were installed along the walls above the benches. Kitchen utensils were stored on shelves along the room, and tools for men's work were stored on others.

Initially, the windows in Russian huts were volokova, that is, observation windows that were cut into adjacent logs, half the log down and up. They looked like a small horizontal slit and were sometimes decorated with carvings. They closed the opening (“veiled”) using boards or fish bladders, leaving a small hole (“peeper”) in the center of the latch.

After some time, the so-called red windows, with frames framed by jambs, became popular. They had a more complex design than the fiber ones, and were always decorated. The height of the red windows was no less three diameters logs in a log house.

In poor houses, the windows were so small that when they were closed, the room became very dark. In rich houses, windows from the outside were closed with iron shutters, often using pieces of mica instead of glass. From these pieces it was possible to create various ornaments, painting them with paints with images of grass, birds, flowers, etc.

Interior decoration of a Russian hut

From approximately the 16th century to the end of the 19th century, the layout of the Russian hut remained virtually unchanged: back wall The home had a Russian stove, usually in the left or right corner, with its forehead turned towards the windows. A sleeping place for family members was arranged on the stove, and a bed (flooring for storing things or bunks for sleeping) was arranged under the ceiling from the stove. Diagonally from the stove was the front, “red” corner, where the table was usually placed. The place opposite the stove was called the oven and was intended for cooking; it was separated, as a rule, using a plank or curtain. Long benches were placed along the walls, and shelves were arranged on the wall above them.

Russian folk hut in modern construction

During the construction of Russian houses, techniques that were common to ancient Rus': cutting corners, methods of attaching floor cuts and ceiling beams, methods of processing and construction of log houses, the sequence of assembly and cutting of timber, etc. When cutting, round logs or logs sawn lengthwise are often used. In addition, in the western regions of the country, logs that are hewn with four sides(plates, bars). This method was already known to the Kuban and Don Cossacks.

The connection of logs in a log house is carried out using deep recesses located at the corners. From time immemorial, the most common method among the Russians was to cut one log into another, while leaving a small distance from the ends of the logs (into a bowl, into a corner, into an oblo).